User Guide

Publishes metric data points to Amazon CloudWatch. CloudWatch associates the data points with the specified metric. If the specified metric does not exist, CloudWatch creates the metric. When CloudWatch creates a metric, it can take up to fifteen minutes for the metric to appear in calls to ListMetrics .

You can publish either individual data points in the Value field, or arrays of values and the number of times each value occurred during the period by using the Values and Counts fields in the MetricDatum structure. Using the Values and Counts method enables you to publish up to 150 values per metric with one PutMetricData request, and supports retrieving percentile statistics on this data.

Each PutMetricData request is limited to 40 KB in size for HTTP POST requests. You can send a payload compressed by gzip. Each request is also limited to no more than 20 different metrics.

Although the Value parameter accepts numbers of type Double , CloudWatch rejects values that are either too small or too large. Values must be in the range of 8.515920e-109 to 1.174271e+108 (Base 10) or 2e-360 to 2e360 (Base 2). In addition, special values (for example, NaN, +Infinity, -Infinity) are not supported.

You can use up to 10 dimensions per metric to further clarify what data the metric collects. For more information about specifying dimensions, see Publishing Metrics in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide .

Data points with time stamps from 24 hours ago or longer can take at least 48 hours to become available for GetMetricData or GetMetricStatistics from the time they are submitted.

CloudWatch needs raw data points to calculate percentile statistics. If you publish data using a statistic set instead, you can only retrieve percentile statistics for this data if one of the following conditions is true:

The SampleCount value of the statistic set is 1 and Min , Max , and Sum are all equal.

The Min and Max are equal, and Sum is equal to Min multiplied by SampleCount .

--timestamp (string)
The time stamp used for the metric. If not specified, the default value is set to the time the metric data was received.

--unit (string)
The unit of metric.

--value (string)
The value for the metric. Although the --value parameter accepts numbers of type Double, Amazon CloudWatch truncates values with very large exponents. Values with base-10 exponents greater than 126 (1 x 10^126) are truncated. Likewise, values with base-10 exponents less than -130 (1 x 10^-130) are also truncated.

--dimensions (string)
The --dimensions argument further expands on the identity of a metric using a Name=Value pair, separated by commas, for example: --dimensionsInstanceID=1-23456789,InstanceType=m1.small . Note that the --dimensions argument has a different format when used in get-metric-data , where for the same example you would use the format --dimensionsName=InstanceID,Value=i-aaba32d4Name=InstanceType,value=m1.small .

--statistic-values (string)
A set of statistical values describing the metric.

--storage-resolution (string)

Valid values are 1 and 60. Setting this to 1 specifies this metric as a high-resolution metric, so that CloudWatch stores the metric with sub-minute resolution down to one second. Setting this to 60 specifies this metric as a regular-resolution metric, which CloudWatch stores at 1-minute resolution. Currently, high resolution is available only for custom metrics. For more information about high-resolution metrics, see High-Resolution Metrics in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide .

This field is optional, if you do not specify it the default of 60 is used.

--cli-input-json (string)
Performs service operation based on the JSON string provided. The JSON string follows the format provided by --generate-cli-skeleton. If other arguments are provided on the command line, the CLI values will override the JSON-provided values. It is not possible to pass arbitrary binary values using a JSON-provided value as the string will be taken literally.

--generate-cli-skeleton (string)
Prints a JSON skeleton to standard output without sending an API request. If provided with no value or the value input, prints a sample input JSON that can be used as an argument for --cli-input-json. If provided with the value output, it validates the command inputs and returns a sample output JSON for that command.